“Fantastic this work, certainly dating back to the lockdown in March [2020] and unfortunately already in an advanced stage of deterioration. Protagonist Dante Alighieri, acknowledged father of Italian literature and language, author of the Divine Comedy, dressed as always in red and crowned with laurel. Arrested as caught without a mask by a policeman with an anti-Covid 19 mask (with an American uniform?) and by another figure in a spacesuit (an astronaut?), also with a mask! Live-size pictures. Many metaphors can be ventured! Florence, via delle Seggiole.” —Arte Leonardo blog, Leonardo da Vinci Art School
GAU Dante, 2021
“GAU-Gallerie d’arte Urbana è un progetto che ha come obiettivo quello di importare un modello di risanamento urbano che riesca, a ispirare bellezza e funzionalità, attraverso la street art, applicata ad un oggetto di uso quotidiano come le campane della raccolta differenziata del vetro. Il progetto ha come obiettivo principale quello di creare un galleria d’arte urbana gratuita, fruibile in ogni momento dal cittadino, per ribadire il concetto dell’arte come bene comune, incentivando l’attenzione sulle tematiche di differenziazione dei rifiuti.
“Per la sua quinta edizione, GAU sceglie di omaggiare Dante Alighieri nel settimo centenario della sua morte. Gli artisti lavoreranno sui 34 canti dell’Inferno, attualizzandoli attraverso la peculiarità del proprio linguaggio artistico, reinterpretando simboli, luoghi e personaggi della Divina Commedia in chiave contemporanea.
“Moby Dick – Giusy Guerriero – Dez – Marta Quercioli – Zara Kiafar – Tito – Violetta Carpino – Kiddo – DesX – Yest – Er Pinto – Olives – Lola Poleggi – Kenji – BloodPurple – Orgh – Lady Nina – Teddy Killer – Valerio Paolucci – Wuarky – Karma Factory – Muges147 – Maudit – Hoek – Alessandra Carloni – Cipstrega – Molecole – Korvo – Alekos Reize – Gojo.” —Gallerie d’Arte Urbana
See a gallery of all 34 decorated recycling bins, one for each canto of the Inferno, on the GAU website. You can also download the magazine on the site, which includes a map where visitors to Rome can locate each bin.
The image above features Korvo’s design for cantos 30-31. Photo credit Valentino Bonacquisti.
Jems Robert Koko Bi, Convoi Royal (2009)
“Dante’s journey paints a fine portrait of the world I was living in when Convoi Royal was created. This time, the world is a lot like reality. A world running a merciless race, steered by wild beasts devouring everything in their way. The huge hooves hammer the ground, chipping it away to form an infernal whirlpool. The earth trembles with each thud, tilts, and is thrown off balance. A terrible panic strikes its inhabitants. They raise their arms to shield their heads, run around in a crazed fray, seeking temporary shelter. In the beginning, these wild animals were normal beings whose duty was to ensure a better future for the world, but their stomachs were too empty and their prey too easy for this duty to be respected. They decided to satisfy their ego instead, rather than work for the well-being of their numerous fellow beings who were famished and dying. The unknown paradise started its royal convoy. Backed up against the wall, I resign myself to a constraint, deadly as it may be: to leave.” –Jems Robert Koko Bi
Retrieved from The Divine Comedy: Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell Revisited by Contemporary African Artists by Simon Njami.
For more information on the Ivorian artist, see Wikipedia. For more information on Convoi Royal, visit the link here.
Kader Attia, Dispossesion (2013)
“Soul—the term occurs often, meant in a rigorously philosophical sense as a ‘vital principle’ or ‘bodily entelechy.’ Just like all the medieval masters, Dante sees in man a being made up of both body and soul. As regards the relationship between the two components, Dante sticks to the Aristotolean solutions, adopted unanimously by the theologians of the day. Hence, the soul may be conceived and represented as separate from the body, in its definitive condition of a dweller in the kingdoms of the afterlife. In this sense, the term is used countless times to refer to the shadows of the dead in their concrete individuality: ‘O spirit courteous of Mantua’ (Inferno, Canto II, 58); ‘But all those souls who weary were and naked,/Their colour changed’ (Inferno, Canto III, 100).”
Retrieved from The Divine Comedy: Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell Revisited by Contemporary African Artists by Simon Njami.
For more on the French-Algerian artist Kader Attia, see Wikipedia.
Pascale Marthine Tayou, Sisiphe remontant le tarmac (2013)
“Miserere—In vulgar Latin, it is the first word of Psalm 50: ‘Miserere mei, Deus, secundum magnam misericordiam tuam,’ used in the Catholic liturgy in funeral services, in the rites of Lent and the Holy Week, and generally in the orations of penitence. The penitential psalm is sung in the Comedy by the rows of the dead, in the second terrace of Ante-Purgatory, and the chant, is recited in alternate verses (‘singing the “Miserere” verse by verse’ [Purgatorio, Canto V, 24]), is interrupted by an exclamation of astonishment when the souls realize from his shadow that Dante is alive. In a rather different context, however, the expression ‘Miserere mei’ is cried out by Dante at the appearance of Virgil’s shadow in the forest (Inferno, Canto I, 65).”
Retrieved from The Divine Comedy: Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell Revisited by Contemporary African Artists by Simon Njami.
For more on the Cameroonian artist Pascale Marthine Tayou, see Wikipedia.
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